Tools room

This is a special area in the venue where we will demonstrate the various tools and platforms that exist to help cities develop in a sustainable way. Come and try them out for yourselves!

Air Quality Index (European Environment Agency)

Air pollution is the single largest environmental health risk in Europe. The European Environment Agency's European Air Quality Index allows users to understand more about air quality where they live. Displaying up-to-hourly data for the whole of Europe, users can gain new insights into the air quality of individual countries, regions and cities.

Green City Tool (ENV)

The Commission has developed a new simple self-assessment and benchmarking tool for cities. A few key characteristics of the tool will be:

It is based on the 12 criteria used for the Green Capital Award

It is a source of information and advice for anyone wanting to learn more about how we can make cities greener and more sustainable.

The tool is all about city governance and the approach taken to sustainable urban planning – it is not about quantitative indicators of sustainability, although it will guide you to the best places to find such information.

The tool has a number of easy-to-use features and functions, and it is flexible too – allowing the user to pick and choose which topics they want to cover, and which functions they would like to use.

Green Driving Tool (Joint Research Centre)

This is a tool that helps you to reduce fuel costs and to select a suitable type of car for your purposes/journeys while reducing CO2 emissions. A future version of the tool will also help drivers selecting the most fuel efficient route for their journeys. The JRC is building simulation models that evaluate fuel consumption and CO2 emissions in vehicles. This will contribute to reducing the impact of vehicles on global warming and help the European Union to make the best choices for the future of our environment.

SHERPA, an integrated assessment tool for air quality planning (Joint Research Centre)

This is a Java/Python tool, which allows for a rapid exploration of potential air quality improvements resulting from national/regional/local emission reduction measures. The tool has been developed with the aim of supporting national, regional and local authorities in the design and assessment of their air quality plans. The tool is based on the relationships between emissions and concentration levels, and can be used to answer the following type of questions:

What is the potential for local action in my domain?

What are the priority activity, sectors and pollutants on which to take action?

What is the optimal dimension that my policy action domain (city, region…) should have to be efficient?"

The SHERPA tool is distributed with EU-wide data on emissions and source-receptor models (spatial resolution of roughly 7x7 km2), so that it is very easy to start working on any region/local domain in Europe. More specifically, SHERPA logical pathway is implemented through the following steps:

Source allocation: to understand how the air quality in a given area is influenced by different sources;

Governance: to analyze how one should coordinate with the surrounding regions to optimally improve air quality;

Scenario analysis: to simulate the impact on air quality of a specific emission reduction scenario (defined also through the previous two steps)

Shaun the Sheep

The Shaun the Sheep game is designed to help teach children about how to create a cleaner, healthier, more ‘sustainable’ future for our cities and the planet. This game, designed by the Sustainable Learning team in the UK and created by Aardman, is free to play and challenges young people to build their own sustainable city by balancing five themes: food, nature, energy, transport and resources, whilst inspiring children to think about green issues. The game has now been translated into all EU languages and developed in 28 Member State versions by the European Commission as part of their promotion of more environmentally sustainable cities and their European Green Capital Award.

The European Climate Adaptation Platform (Climate-ADAPT)

Climate-ADAPT is a knowledge portal, that supports Europe in adapting to climate change and helps users to access and share information on climate change impacts and risks and on policies and experiences on adaptation, not least regarding cities. Cities are hubs of Europe's economic activity, social life, culture, innovation and knowledge-creation. Increases in heatwaves, urban flooding, droughts and forest fires affect cities, which are finding innovative ways to adapt to such impacts. Climate-ADAPT presents many examples of successful urban adaptation and its financing. http://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/ 7 ClairCity – citizen led air pollution reduction in cities ClairCity Skylines is a free app that puts players in charge so they get to decide how they would run their city for the next 50 years. It is part of the ClairCity project involving citizens in decisions about tackling air pollution, carbon emissions and citizen health for urban areas. We are showing our first pilot (based on the city of Bristol, UK) as part of EU Green Week 2018 – play the game and find out if you can save the city.